Flowers for the Dead

The mildewed door frame of the cellar entrance scrapes my head as I make my way inside and my lip instinctively curls at the rank of air within. I am not one for hyperbole, but my initial observations are that of complete disgust. This place is dark, it is damp and above all it is filthy. It is a sad day indeed when I must use it as a laboratory, however under my current circumstances, it cannot be helped.

But at least it is secluded. The one thing I cannot afford is discovery; it would be most disadvantageous to be interrupted now. I clean quickly and efficiently, cleaning off only what I will use, and ignoring what I will not. At last the workroom (I refuse to dignify it by calling it a laboratory) is useable, and I survey the room with the first satisfaction I have felt for weeks. My cauldrons have been enlarged and are sitting on a bench along one wall, the ingredients cupboard has been stocked and my tools are all clean and ready.

I can now begin.

As my hands move through the comfortable motions of potions preparation, they relax and move steadily, without shaking as like they have for the last few months continuously. It feels good to be doing again what I enjoy. Yet the repetitive movements allow time for my mind to wander and inevitably it wanders back to her.

Her. Her voice, her hair and above all, her eyes. Eyes which shone when she was happy and smouldered when she was angry. Eyes which accused me of cowardice.

That thought disturbs me and disrupts my chain of thought. My knife slips and cuts my finger instead of the lily roots I am slicing. Blood oozes out from my finger and mingles with them. It forms tracks of glistening red fluid through the rough brown of the roots, like the illegible sigils of primordial magic. The sight mesmerises me.

I shake myself from my reverie and wash the root. I cannot afford to waste ingredients through clumsiness. I bind my finger quickly with a strip torn from my shirt and I continue working through the night - slicing, chopping, peeling and crushing. When sunrise comes, I make a rough bed with my cloak on the floor and sleep an unsettled sleep.

She comes to me then, in those times which I spend between sleep and wake. She looks tired in a way I do not recognise, hiding her golden face from my sight. She is bent over, whether in tears or laughter I cannot tell. I follow her like a child over a cold blasted heath, the two of us gliding through the bogs and hedges as lightly as fairy breath. Her head bent, she stops suddenly and turns to me with a smile I cannot see. I reach out to her, I cannot help it. Then she raises her head.

She is gray, I think. Her eyes are closed. She is neither crying nor laughing; her face is dead. It cannot be her, I think. Perhaps I shout this. She holds one hand out to me slowly and touches my face with all the tenderness of the world beneath. I cannot move. As I stare, my limbs lifeless, her eyes open. I see nothing but green.

And then I wake.

Tonight I begin brewing. My selenium alloy cauldron gleams coldly by the light of the blue flame under it as I pour the Niobe oil in it. It is set up on one of the few workbenches I trust not to send my precious potion flying to the floor. I add the asphodel first; it slips quietly into the potion, raising scarcely a bubble. I stir sixteen times clockwise, then turn the heat down to yellow and leave the potion to simmer.

I spend that time hunting; I am amused by the irony of the world that even as a fugitive I find I must still hunt. Avada Kedavra kills the hares quickly; for even as a hunter-gatherer I cannot suppress my natural brutality. I am not graceful like she is. The hares look surprised at their manner of death, however they are accepting of them. Perhaps they knew from the first time they heard me set foot in their forest that they would die. Maybe that is why they do not beg.

I eat the flesh raw, as penitence for the memories that return to me from the eyes of the hares. Those liquid brown eyes. I see blue in them, gray and suddenly, they are green. I drop the hare in shock and see my hands covered in blood. They begin to shake again and my mind fills with the imagery of death. No matter how hard I scrub my hands, they do not stop their shaking and I realise that I cannot continue making my potion like this. It is imperative that I finish my work. I go back to my hovel of a potions workroom, but the asphodel does not look ready for the next step. I do not waste time swearing, but instead I prepare for another dayÕs sleep. The heat under the cauldron is turned off and the scent of asphodel fills the workroom; it is bittersweet and funereal.

She comes again. Her bare foot is next to my head as I lie on the grimy floor and has no traces of the dirt that is so prevalent in my current accommodation. It really is a beautiful foot; flower-like in its natural perfection and an allusion in white to the spectral beauty of her namesake. She holds out her hand for me and I recoil, for her face is that of Draco Malfoy. It reminds me of the last time I saw him; translucent skin grime-speckled and her green eyes watching me through his face, glazed with his last tears. She plucks at my hand, pulling me onto my feet. I struggle against her, yet somehow she prevails.

We are no longer in my workroom. The landscape is now moonlit and bleak, and out of the corners of my eyes I see ill-defined figures flitting through the dark. I keep my head down, my eyes on her feet in order to avoid her strange Draco-hybrid face. My feet crunch over fields of asphodel and yet hers do not make a sound as she steals through the endless gray meadow.

She stops suddenly, doubling over in silent pain. I go to her, trying to hold her up and yet she is a dead weight. I stagger, then my arm gives away and she drops to the ground, the asphodel arresting her fall. She lies there on the ground and I stand next to her head. Her eyelids are still open, displaying empty sockets. I am secretly relieved that her face is no longer Draco's. I wonder emotionlessly when this happened.

"You should know, Professor. After all, it was your fault," a calm voice says from behind me. I turn around and see Draco standing there. His face is now bone china white, and yet his eyes have the same death-gaze as before and their gray unfocus is a reproach to my soul.

"Flores para los muertos," Draco says in a voice which sounds older and completely foreign to the bratty youth I mentored in school, or the terrified boy I last remember begging for his life. I look at him and with a sensation of dread, watch as his eyes turn the colour of sky through a pair of half-moon glasses. He ignores my horror and picks an asphodel bloom from the ground with a small, bloodless hand. He throws it at the feet of her body, still lying motionless on the ground. I do the same. We do this silently until the flowers cover her like a burial shroud and the not-sweet smell of asphodel becomes overpowering.

Draco looks at me with his lifeless eyes and nods. "Corones para los muertos," he says.

And I awake.

It is still light out, yet I begin the next stage of my preparation. The asphodel petals have separated nicely and I turn the heat up again. To this solution I add the thorns of the carduus benedictus and the juice of the sopophorus bean and stir until the solution turns colourless. I stir in essence of hemlock and the runespoor scales. and I smile grimly in satisfaction as the potion turns the exact luminescent blue required. The milky goatsbeard sap is added to the potion drop wise, stirred in a figure of eight after each drop and this step requires my full attention. I am rewarded with a buttery aroma rising from the now opaque solution. I skim off the white precipitate floating at the top and I am now ready for the last step. I drop each slice of lily root into the potion carefully, ensuring it doesnÕt splash. As I do, the potion slowly turns a clear green, the vibrant colour of spring, yet it is also the colour of spell induced death.

It is the Endymion potion; my final requiem. A modified Draught of Living Death, it will allow the drinker to remain dead to the world, alive only in dreams. I carefully pour the emerald liquid into a clear glass flask, from where it infects the passing air currents with its colour.

I drink the potion.

For once in my life, I feel lightheaded. I stagger over to the chair in my workroom and I sit to await her arrival. And she comes quickly. Her figure is more distinct now than it was before, her pale shift sharply detailed with light shades of gray. She smiles at me and the personality evident in her smile makes me almost euphoric with relief.

She indicates to me and I follow. We leave the workroom and arrive not in the woods but in one of the Slytherin dorms, or at least a hollow facsimile of them. She raises an eyebrow at me and I cannot help but laugh. She leads me up the stairs into the empty dormitory and I lie on my old bed, awaiting my long deserved sleep.

Yet it doesnÕt come. She stands there and watches me, a slight smile on her face. I am immobilised. She draws her wand and I experience an iamb of silent confusion. Suddenly my fear crystallises. There were still traces of my blood on the lily root when I added it. But it is too late now.

She looks at me and for the first time in these meetings, speaks.

"Crucio."

I cannot wake.

---

A Requiem by Ernest Dowson

Neobule, being tired,
Far too tired to laugh or weep,
From the hours, rosy and gray,
Hid her golden face away.
Neobule, fain of sleep,
Slept at last as she desired!

Neobule! is it well,
That you haunt the hollow lands,
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Plucking, with their spectral hands,
Scentless blooms of asphodel?

Neobule, tired to death
Of the flowers that I threw
On her flower-like, fair feet,
Sighed for blossoms not so sweet,
Lunar roses pale and blue,
Lilies of the world beneath.

Neobule! ah, too tired
Of the dreams and days above!
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Out of life and out of love,
Sleeps the sleep which she desired.